Digital media offers many opportunities for civic and cultural participation. This technology is not equally easy for everyone to use. Often, people with disabilities require accommodation, assistive technologies, or other forms of aid to make digital media accessible for them, but are unable to obtain them.

Restricted Access investigates digital media accessibility—the processes by which media is made usable by people with specific needs—and argues for creating access to enable greater participation in all forms of mediated culture. It argues that if digital media leads to opportunities for individuals to create and participate, but the technology only facilitates the participation of the privileged, then its progressive potential remains unrealized. The book demonstrates the importance of alternate uses, marginalized voices, and invisible innovations in the context of disability identities and asks for a rethink on digital media accessibility.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Interrogating and Integrating Access

Regulating Digital Media Accessibility: #CaptionTHIS

You Already Know How to Use It: Technology, Disability, and Participation

“… transforms our understanding of what “access” means … Elizabeth Ellcessor reveals the ways in which ability, culture, and technology are all entangled in questions of accessibility … Ellcessor’s book is a major advance in media studies and disability studies, and will also be of great interest to scholars in policy.”

Jonathan Sterne,

Author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format

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Elizabeth Ellcessor

Elizabeth Ellcessor is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University–Bloomington. Her research focuses on disability, digital media, and access as they relate to public politics, cultural engagement, and participation. In a previous life, she was a web developer for a nonprofit organization. More About Author